The Key to the Golden Firebird (15 page)

“Kind of.”

“Bad?”

“I feel…unclean.”

“Unclean? Or jealous?”

“The weirdest part is that I got this feeling like it wasn't even the first time,” May said. “He's been dating her for what, not even a month? I mean, what the hell?”

“He's sleeping with her? Who told you? Pete or Nell?”

“Nell.”

“Are you sure she's not lying?”

“I don't think so,” May said. “She described the inside of his house.”

“They had sex inside his house?”

“Maybe we should talk about this later,” May said. Before, when she'd found this out, she'd just thought it was weird. Now that the exam was over, the facts were starting to sink in, and they were immeasurably depressing.

“May?”

“Yeah?”

“You're bummed, aren't you?”

“Kind of.”

May rolled to the side of the bunk and looked down at Linda.

“The other night,” she said, “when Brooks got busted—Pete stayed with me. He sat with me and…”

“And?”

“Well, he just held my hand. But it was weird. It felt kind of huge.”

“Huge?”

“Yeah,” May said, hanging her head over the edge. “Sucks, doesn't it?”

“No,” Linda said. “He likes you. You like him.”

“If he likes me so much, why is he sleeping with a girl I work with?”

“It could be that he thinks he has no shot with you.”

“I guess that's one way of handling rejection….”

“Think about it,” Linda said. “Before you knew that he dated this other girl and that he was sleeping with Nell, you
never seemed to think of him like he was a guy. Now you seem to. So maybe it's good.”

“Good how?” May grumbled, rolling onto her back and propping her feet against the ceiling. “Good for making me feel jealous and pathetic?”

“Talk to him.”

“And say what?” May asked. “I can't compete with Nell. I'm not ready for that yet.”

Linda fell silent. May listened to the traffic passing by out on Locust Street.

“If it really bothers you, maybe you should stay away from him for a while,” Linda suggested. “I mean, if you're not going to do anything about it, why torture yourself?”

“Stay away?” This hadn't occurred to May before. “I'd have to stop the lessons.”

“It sounds like you're almost ready anyway.”

“Maybe you're right,” May said, closing her eyes. “Maybe I need to do this one on my own.”

 

Palmer was completely alone in the house that night. She didn't mind. She planned on taking advantage of that fact to conduct her most thorough examination of her mother's room yet—she was going to do the top shelves of the walk-in closet.

She started by carefully removing her mother's shoe boxes and sweaters, arranging them on the floor exactly as they'd been set up on the shelf so she would be able to put everything back as it had been. As she had expected, she hit a gold mine. There were yearbooks, photo albums, a heavy crate of vinyl records. She spread herself out on the bed and took a long look through everything.

The most interesting items could be found in the photo albums. These were early ones, from when her parents had started dating. She spent a good two hours paging through them. There was her mom in leather pants and ripped shirts and Halloween-like makeup; then there she was in her nursing school uniform, looking demure. There was her dad, with the same goofy face he made in every picture—his huge eyes popping open and the strange grin that obscured his bottom teeth. There he was with his college roommate Richard Camp at a toga party. There he was, eighteen years old, posing in front of the Firebird, which he had just purchased.

These pictures fascinated Palmer. The idea that her parents had had lives before she and her sisters had come along—totally different lives—was hard for her to believe. The pictures had been taken in front of bars, in dorm rooms, in hallways at parties. Her dad with a beer in one hand, his other arm wrapped all the way around her mom's tiny waist. She could see the slow change as she flipped through. Her mother cut back on the makeup; her father grew a little larger. There were pictures of them in cutoff jeans and T-shirts (her mother's pregnant belly proudly popping out) getting Brooks's room ready. Then there was May, with the head of red hair she'd been born with. And then the picture labeled
Me and Peach
. That was her father holding her when she'd just been born. She looked incredibly tiny in her father's arms; he practically had her resting in one of his hands.

After a couple of hours, Palmer started packing up. As she replaced the items on their shelf, she realized the shoe box she was holding was very heavy. She took off the lid. Inside she found a bronze canister, shaped like a vase. In small block letters
along the bottom was an engraving that read
Michael Scott Gold
.

For a moment Palmer thought she'd found a strange trophy. Then it hit her. These were the ashes.

Time stopped moving for Palmer for about ten minutes.

Palmer took the canister from the box and willed herself to walk over and set it gently against the pillows on her father's side of the bed. She stared at it. She couldn't put it back, not up there in a shoe box in the back of the closet. It was impossible.

No. She had to take care of the canister. It was her job now.

She hurriedly replaced all of the other items in the closet, including the empty shoe box. When everything was as it had been before, she plucked the canister up and quickly took it to her room.

Without the burden of having to study, May had no problem sleeping in on the first few days of the summer. She had to be at Presto at three, so she lay in bed until eleven, basking in the cool breeze from her clickity oscillating fan.

When she came downstairs, she found her mother sitting at the table in a pair of black running pants and a black T-shirt. There was a box of doughnuts on the table. May eyed them. Her mom must have picked them up on the way back from dropping Brooks off at the pool for work. Her mother never bought doughnuts unless she had something unpleasant to tell them.

“Doughnuts?” she said. “Okay. What's going on?”

“Well,” her mother said, casually piling up a stack of laundry detergent coupons, “the Starks offered us something.”

“One of their boys? Say no. We don't have any Ritalin to give them.”

“Their RV. It turns out they rented a spot at a campground in Ocean City, Maryland, for a few days, starting on the first of July, but they can't use it.”

RV? May's mind tried to connect these letters to an object, but the only thing she could come up with was one of those extremely large trailers.

“A what?”

“Like a Winnebago. They keep it at Bonnie's mother's house.”

“But that's so soon,” May said.

“I know.”

“I have work,” May said, sitting down with her coffee. “Brooks has work, and she has her alcohol awareness classes. And Palmer has her softball camp. We can't go then.”

“You can take off. Brooks can take off, and we can work around her class schedule. Palmer can miss a few practices.”

“But why?”

“We need to spend some time together,” her mother said, peering at the coupons. “I think we need to regroup a little.”

“But we've never been camping,” May said slowly, taking a chocolate doughnut from the box. “I mean, we don't even know
how
to camp.”

“I know how to camp. I went camping when I was younger, and your father and I used to go.”

“You used to
camp
?”

“Sure.” Her mom nodded. “Why do you seem so surprised?”

“How did you keep your hair spiky in the woods? Did you have to use maple sap or something?”

“It wasn't that spiky. And I just used to tie it back under a bandanna.”

“Punk-rock nurse in the wild, using her hair to trap small animals…”

“New wave, not punk,” her mother corrected. “Anyway, you'll love it. We'll camp right on the beach.”

“We're going to park a huge RV on the beach?” May asked. “Won't it…sink?”

“The park is next to the beach. It's paved.”

Palmer passed through the kitchen and grabbed a doughnut
from the box. She was about to leave, but her mom caught her by the sleeve of her shirt.

“What?” Palmer growled.

“Just explain that it's a family emergency,” her mom said to May.

“But it's
not
a family emergency.”

“What's not a family emergency?” Palmer yawned and took a bite of her doughnut.

“Going to Maryland in an RV,” May said.

Even Palmer couldn't ignore something like that. “Mwhuh?” she replied as she chewed her doughnut.

“On July first,” May added.

“Mhwha?”

“To Maryland! They have crabs there!” their mom suddenly jumped in, as if the presence of crustaceans would transform the prospect of spending days trapped together in a parking lot into a living dream.

“Mom,” May said, “RVs are enormous. They're like houses. How are you going to drive something like that to Maryland?”

“It'll be fine,” Mom said. “They explained everything to me. And it's gorgeous. They took me through it. It has a bathroom, and a shower, and a TV, and everything.”

“That's when my summer session starts,” Palmer finally said. “I can't go.”

“I'm not asking you, I am telling you. We need some time together, and we are going. It's up to each of you to get yourselves ready to go.”

“I'm supposed to take the driver's exam…,” May said.

“You'll take it when we get back. Or take it before you go. It will be fine.”

Palmer leaned against the counter, chomping furiously on her doughnut. When she was finished, she left the room without a word.

 

Palmer stalked into the backyard. It wasn't a great idea to go and exercise with a fat doughnut still sitting in her stomach, but she had to do something.

She bent her knees just slightly and hung herself down over her toes until she could easily straighten out her legs and put her palms on the ground. The grass was already dry and warm, and there was a fat bee buzzing around nearby.

She knew perfectly well that the girls who got on the professional teams, the Olympic teams, and the good college teams all went to camps and had personal coaches. She was way, way behind. Her dad had known all about this. You needed to be serious about it; otherwise, you were just another girl with a pile of worthless school trophies and a few pictures in the sports pages in the yearbook. Brooks's entire dresser was filled with trophies—what had they gotten her? Now the only thing Brooks did was lifeguard at the pool. It was pathetic.

As she hung upside down, she saw her mother coming out the back door with her cup of coffee in her hand. Palmer gracefully moved her right foot back into a lunge and pretended not to notice her.

“Do you have a second, Palm?”

“No,” Palmer said, reversing her feet and stepping back with her left.

“You seem mad.”

Palmer deepened her lunge and concentrated on stretching out her inner thigh.

“It's only a few days. And I thought you liked the beach.”

“I start summer session then,” Palmer said simply.

“You'll only miss three days.”

“We play our first game for the scouts on the sixth,” Palmer said.

“We'll be back by then.”

“But I won't have time to get ready!”

“It's just a game,” her mom said. “You know how to play. You'll be fine. Then you can start the session on Monday.”

“Why do we have to go now?”

“Because that's when the Starks have the space,” her mother said. “They're doing us a favor.”

Palmer shook her head. Her mom just didn't get it.

“I'm going to go run,” she said.

“Our lives don't revolve around softball, Palmer,” her mother said, irritation creeping into her voice. “I'm sorry if this doesn't fit your schedule the way you'd like, but that's not the only thing we have to consider.”

Palmer walked away from her out of the yard. As she passed through the house, she saw May still sitting at the table.

“I don't really want to go either,” May said.

“It won't hurt you,” Palmer spat. “You'll just miss work.”

She continued on her way to the front door and headed out to the street.

The day before the trip May was in the basement, staring down into a laundry basket full of her sisters' dirty underwear and listening to the rhythmic thumping of the load she had just put into the dryer. There was a heavy fabric softener smell in the air, and she realized that she had forgotten to clean out the lint trap.

It was nine o'clock at night, and she'd just gotten off an eleven-hour shift. To compensate for the time she would be gone, May had managed to squeeze in fifty hours at work over the last four and a half days. Technically, this wasn't legal, but she'd managed to quietly swap out with people on the side. She had only “officially” been there for thirty-two hours; the rest of the time she'd entered someone else's work code into the cash register. During her absence some of her shifts would be covered in the same way.

The overtime meant that even if she'd wanted to, she'd had almost no time to see Pete. She hadn't even spoken to him in almost two weeks. He had called several times, but she'd never called back.

The idea, of course, was that this separation was going to make things easier for May. In reality, it made things much worse. She'd found that it was becoming harder and harder to listen to Nell talking about him. There was no way to deny it. She missed him, and not being around him was weird.

She stared at the bits of broken elastic zinging up from the waistband of one of Brooks's blue thongs.

“Why I am doing this?” she suddenly said out loud. “This is Brooks's job.”

She grabbed the basket, marched up the basement steps, and went into the living room, where Palmer and Brooks were silently watching a baseball game. She dropped it to the floor.

“You do this,” she said.

“What?” Brooks said, not looking over.

“This is your job,” May said. “You do it.”

“We've already done our stuff,” Brooks said, turning to May. “We had to clean out the garage and get all of the dishes and chairs and beach stuff ready. We're done.”

“But this is
your job
, remember? I've been doing it for weeks because you haven't.”

“Like I said, I'm done.”

“Well…” May kicked the basket in her direction. “I've done the first two loads of stuff. Now I guess it just depends on how much you want underwear for the next five days.”

She walked away, feeling a strange adrenaline rush. She went upstairs to her room, closed the door, sank down on her shaggy rose-colored carpet, and picked up the phone. Before she could think it over, she dialed Pete's number. He answered and was clearly surprised to hear her voice.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “Seriously. Can you—I mean, are you around?”

“I'm here,” he said. “I can. I was supposed to meet Nell after work, but…”

“Oh,” May said quickly. “Never mind.”

“But it's not a big deal. I can get out of it. You sound kind of burned out.”

“I am,” May admitted. “I just need to not be here.”

“Sure,” he said. “No problem. Give me fifteen minutes?”

May got off the phone.

She changed into her favorite T-shirt, a blue camouflage print. She squirted on some freesia body spray and let her hair down. Maybe it was the light (or the lack of it, since the blinds were down), but May actually liked the way she looked tonight. She pulled her hair around her chin. With her widow's peak, this gave her face a heart shape. The blue shirt made her eyes seem even greener.

Brooks and Palmer were still watching the baseball game when she went back downstairs. The laundry still sat in the middle of the room.

“Where are you going?” Palmer said, glancing over at May.

“Out.”

Brooks and Palmer watched in amazement as May sailed out the door.

 

May was waiting on the front step when Pete pulled up. The humidity had frazzled his hair a bit, and he was wearing his standard-issue cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read I Ate the Whole Thing!

“I called you,” he said as she got into the car. “You haven't called back.”

“Sorry,” May said. “It's just been a weird couple of weeks.”

“Oh.”

“Can we just go away from here?” May asked. “Can we just drive?”

“Sure.” He nodded, pulling back on the road. “Anything wrong?”

“Just stir-crazy. And I have to go away tomorrow.”

“Away?”

“Camping on the beach for a few days. I'll be trapped with Palmer and Brooks.”

“I have an idea,” he said. “I think you'll like it.”

They drove for about ten minutes. May noticed that they were heading for the edge of the city, to the northeast. The houses got closer together as they approached the city line. There was a high wall of fence and trees. Pete pulled into a hard-to-spot opening, which led to a vast, empty parking lot.

“What is this?” May asked as Pete stopped the car in front of a small white building. She then noticed a line of white golf carts next to the building, just behind a cyclone fence. “Is this where you work?”

“Yup.” He nodded. “The world's crappiest golf course.”

“What do you do here?” she said, looking through the fence at the expanse of shadowy lawn.

“I'm a cart boy, but really I'm sort of an unofficial greenskeeper. I mow lawns, dig holes, collect the pins at night. And I sometimes accidentally lose control of the carts and chase golfers into the rough. Stay here a second.”

He walked up to the door of the building and let himself in. A minute later he appeared on the other side of the fence. He unlocked the gate from the inside, let her in, and locked it again. He walked to the first parked cart and pulled off the seat, revealing the engine underneath.

“Here's another lesson,” he said, pointing at the mess of
parts. “This is the governor. It regulates the speed. And this is how you disengage it.” He produced one of the tiny scorecard pencils from his pocket, pulled back a spring, and jammed the pencil in as far as it would go.

“Now this,” he said, replacing the seat, “is a much-improved golf cart. Hop in.”

“Won't people get upset?”

“This is a public golf course. No one cares. My boss definitely doesn't. Come on.”

With a quick look around May carefully got into the cart.

“Aren't there cameras or anything?”

“Nope.”

“Or guard dogs?”

“No. It's really simple. Accelerator. Brake. Wheel. Put your foot on the brake.”

May did so. Before she knew what was happening, Pete put in the key and started up the engine.

“That switch by your leg flips it from forward to reverse,” he said. “You have to come to a full stop before changing direction, or it'll make a really ugly sound.”

May nervously glanced down by her leg.

“Drive wherever you like. Just be careful not to go too fast on the declines, especially near the water. Not that that even matters much. It's only a foot deep. But you might flip the cart.”

“What?”

“And don't push the brake too hard, or it will switch to an emergency brake. If that happens, just tap it again and it should release.”

“Oh my God…”

“Okay,” he said. “Go!”

“What about you?”

“I'll be right behind you,” he said, pulling the seat off the next cart. “Go on.”

The thing was chugging underneath her. She put her foot on the accelerator, and the cart started rolling forward. Though there were a few floodlights scattered around the perimeter, they barely illuminated the ground. She saw some slight dips, bits of sand and grass, but mostly just murk. Pete shot past her a moment later and waved her on. She hit the accelerator and the cart rumbled along a little faster.

Puttering through the dark at ten miles an hour wouldn't be exciting to some people, but to May it was kind of like having a private amusement park. Sometimes she trailed along behind Pete, and sometimes she just drove off whichever path she liked and he would come along and find her. Then they would race for a minute.

After about an hour, when she felt she'd had enough, she rode up next to him.

“How do I stop it?” she yelled over.

“What?”

“You said if I hit it too hard, it would turn on the emergency brake! So I don't know how to make it stop!”

He stopped his cart and jumped out. Then he jogged alongside her and hopped into her cart.

“Excuse me,” he said, reaching over her and putting his foot on the brake and his hands on the wheel. This meant that he was somewhat on top of her, which was a weird sensation. The cart
eased to a halt. He turned off the engine and retracted himself.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No. Thanks. I would have been riding around all night.”

“Or until it ran out of gas,” he said, putting his feet up on the dashboard (which was also the hood). May followed suit and gazed around at the course.

“Your hair is getting longer,” she commented.

“Oh, yeah. I haven't cut it in a while. I know, it's—”

“It looks good. You should keep it.” She nodded.

“You like it this long?”

“Well, it was longer when we were kids, but then it just made you look crazy.”

“And it doesn't now?”

“You still look crazy. But it suits you. You don't scare me as much as you used to.”

“You thought
I
was scary?”

“You
were
scary,” she said. “You're
still
scary. You're just not
as
scary.”

“Me? You used to flick me on the head with a pencil every time I looked at you.”

“Self-defense.”

“No, it wasn't.” He laughed. “You were
always
trying to kick my ass.”

“You must be thinking of Brooks.”

“No. That was you.”

They were shoulder to shoulder now. She could actually feel his heart beat by leaning against him. There was something comforting about being here—it was open, yet it was dark and quiet. Nothing they said here would be heard by anyone.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

May slapped a mosquito on her leg and flicked it away. She didn't reply for a moment. She didn't know what she was feeling.

“I'm not mad,” she finally said. “I think it's really weird that you're dating Nell. I know both of you. It's just weird when two people you know are together. And I've known you forever….”

A bat flew out of one of the trees next to the course and zipped past them. May jumped. She was edgy now, and a deep curiosity was burning inside her.

“Was Nell the first?” she asked.

“First?”

“First person you slept with.”

“Um…” Pete stared around at the dark trees. “No. There was Jenna.”

“Oh.” May nodded.

Okay, it really bothered her. It was like she'd swallowed a drill, and it was boring a hole through her insides. Now she felt like she was somehow way too unsophisticated for him—for Pete,
her
Pete. The whole thing was just humiliating, and it hurt.

“Great,” she heard herself saying. “Good for you. Go, Pete.”

Pete kept unbuckling his watch, taking it off, and putting it back on again. His face was serious.

“With Jenna, it was kind of weird,” he said. “She had a lot of problems. Her parents put a lot of pressure on her. I know she looked really happy all the time, but she was on antidepressants.”

“Jenna was?”

“She used to have to talk to me or be with me all the time.
She was always really emotional, constantly, but especially after we would—”

He grabbed his mouth, as if he had just caught it speaking out of turn without his knowledge. He thoughtfully drummed his long fingers against his lips, debating how much more to say.

“Have sex?” May asked.

“Right.”

“Intense.”

“Yeah.”

“So what happened? You said you stopped calling each other.”

“
We
didn't stop calling each other,” he said slowly. “It's just that she always needed me. Always. And if you have sex with someone and then they always start crying afterward, you start to wonder about yourself. It's sort of not what you hope for.”

May caught herself smiling at that, even though it didn't seem appropriate.

“So we didn't stop calling each other—I stopped calling her. I didn't know what to say to her anymore or what to do.”

In the last minute or so, it seemed like the world had utterly transformed in May's eyes. The perfect Jenna Cazwell was depressed. Pete had done something a bit cruel, but also pretty understandable. His confession lifted her sinking spirits. She felt the spasm in her stomach relax.

“It sounds like a dick move,” he said dejectedly. “I almost told you before, when we were in the city. But I thought you'd hate me, you know, more than usual.”

“I don't hate you. You're Camper. Nobody hates Camper.”

“That's not true.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I'm pretty sure Jenna does.”

“But I don't,” May said. “I know you're a nice guy. I mean, your mom makes you teach me how to drive and you don't even—”

“My mom never asked me,” he said.

“What?”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Seemed like it might be a good thing to do. So I just offered.”

It hung in the air between them for a moment.

“Why did you make up the part about your mom?” May asked.

“You looked suspicious, so I decided to say that my mom had asked me to. Sounded like something that could happen. Are you mad?”

The one thing May knew at that point was that she was definitely not mad. Instinctively she reached out to ruffle his hair to reassure him. She always whapped at his curls when they were kidding around. This time, though, instead of just giving the outer curls a quick shake, she actually let her fingers sink in. His hair was very soft, almost like baby hair. She could feel his surprise at the contact. He sat up a bit straighter.